Love I have served, for such length of time
If I forsake Him no man should blame me,
Now I go, and commend him to God in rhyme,
Man shouldnt give his whole life to folly.
And hes a fool who cant keep from loving,
And cant see in it all these torments of mine.
Id be thought a child if I furthered the crime,
Theres a season for everything in being.
Ive never been like those other men
Who having loved, seek to decry him,
And speak of him with boorish intent:
A man shouldnt sell his loyalty towards him
Nor slander his Lord nor turn against him:
Let whoever renounces avoid dissent.
For myself, my wishes are all well meant.
May lovers have joy, now Im free again.
Love has been good to me until now,
For he made me love with nobility
The loveliest and the best I vow,
That in my opinions ever been seen.
Love wishes it and my Lady begs me
To leave off loving, I thank her and bow,
Since it pleases my lady I do allow
No better reason than that for me.
No other reward from Love I received
Long though I served him faithfully:
But God in his mercy has rescued me,
And released me from his mastery.
Since Ive escaped with my life, I see
This as the best hour of life, set free,
And Ill still write many an elegy,
And many a sonnet and eulogy.
A man at the outset should always take care
To aim at something modest to win,
Though Love wont always let us beware
What we choose as object, or what we think.
We fall for a stranger, and in we sink,
Who lives so far off we cant travel there,
Rather than with one whos always near:
And that shows the folly Love traps us in.
Now God save me from love, and loving again,
Except love of Her whom we should love here,
Through whom every mans redeemed from sin.
